It is a world, as described by Laura Tingle, in which special deals and politicians’ privileges seem commonplace. If ever there was a bubble, remote from public awareness and the real world, this is it.

Helloworld is a large travel services company with extensive government contracts. Burnes, its managing director and chief executive is federal treasurer of the Liberal Party organisation, a position held in the past by a string of prominent businessmen, including Malcolm Turnbull, Ron Walker and John Elliot among others.

The duties of the position include handling major fund-raising through arm-twisting the high-end of town. Burnes had also previously served as treasurer of the Victorian division of the party. He is a party man through and through, though until now not very well-known.

The first of the controversies was the revelation, explored in a Senate Estimates committee, that Helloworld had arranged a family holiday for the Minister for Finance, Mathias Cormann, to Singapore worth $2780, but never billed him. It emerged that Cormann had booked the flights directly with Burnes rather than in the usual way, reflecting the closeness of their friendship.

Cormann was embarrassed and apologetic and both he and the company explained away the free flights as an administrative oversight, which they rectified when contacted by the media. How the oversight occurred has not yet been satisfactorily explained and, at the very least, Cormann’s situation reveals a privilege not extended to ordinary citizens in their dealings with government.

The second controversy involves allegations that Australia’s Ambassador to Washington, former federal treasurer Joe Hockey, intervened at Burnes’ request to give special access to a Helloworld employee based in Europe to Hockey and his embassy staff in Washington. Purportedly this was to discuss current arrangements for the delivery of government travel services in the USA. Hockey rejects these allegations, while revealing that he and Burnes and their families have been close personal friends for nearly twenty years.

So what? Is all this just party politics with an election looming? Is it driven by the envy of those outside the bubble?

It is no surprise that senior government ministers and the big end of town are so closely intertwined. Perhaps there are no special deals or politicians’ privileges, but maybe where there is smoke there is fire. Certainly the potential for overlap between lobbying and party politics should be a public concern regardless of ministerial declarations of interest and arms-length tender processes.

Attention is given to the apparently dangerous overlap for democracy between third-party lobbying and the holding of party office. In a field where so much lobbying is conducted by individuals with party connections parties have moved to separate the two.

Tony Abbott was instrumental within the NSW Liberal Party in telling prominent lobbyists to choose between their party positions and their lobbying businesses. They chose the latter but evidently continued to exercise influence within the party through their proxies. Incidentally one prominent NSW lobbyist and fundraiser, Michael Yabsley, also once served as federal treasurer of the Liberal Party.

The controversy about the relationships of Burnes and Helloworld with current and former government ministers recalls an older style of politics, the do-it-yourself lobbying of the 1960s when so much of the modern lobbying and advocacy professions were in their infancy.

This was a world in which privileged access was afforded to prominent businessmen whose insider status included membership of large business advocacy organisations, appointment to various government advisory bodies and in some cases direct service to the Liberal Party. Relationships were cemented in this way.

A clear case was Sir Charles McGrath, managing director and then chairman of the big motor vehicle components company Repco, at a time before free trade when the motor vehicle industry was dependent on tariff protection. Sir John McEwen, a friend of McGrath, was trade minister.

McGrath too was federal treasurer of the Liberal Party from 1968 to 1974, and like Burnes came to the position after also serving as treasurer of the Victorian Liberal Party. The background of the two men is eerily similar, forty years apart, as Burnes met Hockey when he was a member of the Australian Tourism Export Council and Hockey was John Howard’s tourism minister. The sign of the economic times is that McGrath was in manufacturing and Burnes is in the services sector.

Insider politics has many angles. Professional lobbyists take up a large part of the discussion, through concentration on the work of industry pressure groups, in-house government relations specialists working for the major corporations and, most of all, the sort of fee-for-service companies, like Barton Deakin and Hawker Britton, that feature on lobbyists registration schemes which try to regulate their activities. There is also a wider circle of professionals in the public relations, issues management and communication industries.

While the professionals attract plenty of attention there is often barely a nod in the direction of the wealthy amateurs, the owners, big shareholders and board members whose relationships with government ministers and senior bureaucrats already gives them their own privileged access. They are embedded in politics as a matter of course.

The professionals can be described as the B team, to be called on for paid services and advice when necessary. Key amateurs like Burnes, at the heart of the political process, though often flying under the radar, are the A team.

John Warhurst is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University.